It's rainy season

I read a lot of things about travelling in Tanzania, only to arrive here and think, no, that doesn`t really happen. I read the mosquitos were really bad, but then there was hardly a sign of them so I thought it was all a bit exaggerated until Rachel caught malaria. I read loads of posts on a travel site about people being hustled out of money in Dar es Salaam but thought that no traveler would be silly enough to get in a car with people they don`t know; only to hear this morning that TWO of the volunteers got hustled in Dar by the exact same scheme.

I`d heard about May being rainy season here, but after two weeks of hardly a drop of rain, I didn`t really believe it. Yesterday we passed the new Canadian girls on the dirt path to the orphanage and joked about it looking a little rainy. It started dribbling a bit a few minutes later, and literally as soon as we stepped foot in the orphanage the heavens opened. It must have poured down for at least an hour - the dirt roads all flooded and the girls came running back after about twenty minutes drenched to the bone.

This afternoon, Rachel and I decided to try and find a new internet cafe in Nyakato, much closer to Buswelu and without all the hassles of town. As we set off the sky looked a little dark but we figured we`d get there before the rain started. We got on the dalla-dalla at Buswelu and had a really nice conversation with an old man opposite us. The roads had been made even worse by the rains yesterday and the dalla-dalla almost tipped over going round a corner. I couldn`t stand it any longer and said "shusha" (stop) and the old man laughed a little and said make sure you tell people what it`s like here, how bad things are.

It's so hard to describe, but the roads are horrendous. Only on the main road and in the very centre of town are they paved. All of the outskirts and villages are on dirt roads, which were bad to begin with but have now had two months of torrential rains and are virtually unpassable. Noone I know in the West would drive a car on these roads, yet Tanzanians are forced to travel squished into minivans and the back of pickup trucks without safety belts or often even seats. Every day we read in the paper about crashes that kill and wound most, if not all, the people onboard. My co-volunteers think I am totally nuts, but after so little time I have already reached the point that I would prefer to walk 45 minutes to the main road than risk it riding in a dalla-dalla.

So we walked to the main road and jumped on another dalla-dalla to Nyakato, only to get out and not be able to find the place. The rain started to come down and the choice was into Mwanza or go home. We went onto Mwanza and got out of the (THIRD!) dalla-dalla just in time to give the locals a wonderful view of two soaked muzungos. I think Rachel`s white t-shirt and blue bra made quite an impression on the men!